Department of Performing Arts

The Georgetown Theater and Performance Studies Program integrates creative and critical inquiry, emphasizing artistic excellence, interdisciplinary learning, socially engaged performance, and the spirit of collaboration. Offering a dynamic major in Theater and Performance Studies, the Program features a nationally recognized faculty, including a number of the field’s leading scholar/artists, and many of the region's leading professional theater practitioners. One of the country's only undergraduate programs in Theater and Performance Studies, the fast-growing program has rapidly attracted significant national attention for its distinctive curriculum, reflecting the political and international character of Georgetown, as well as for its commitment to social justice, and its high-quality, cutting-edge student production seasons. These offerings, which include many DC and world premieres, as well as classics, musicals, cutting-edge contemporary plays, adaptations, ensemble-devised work, innovative family-oriented programs, and professional partnership events, have drawn consistently sold-out houses and attention from press outlets such as The Washington Post, which has said, "Georgetown...in recent years has established itself as the region's most imaginative outpost for drama." The Theater and Performance Studies Program is distinctive for its focus on adapting, devising and developing new work, civic theater and community-based performance, political theater, international and cross-cultural performance, playwriting, performance art, solo and multimedia performance, ensemble-created performance, physical theater, world theater history, and innovative approaches to design and technology, acting, directing, dramaturgy, technical theater, and more.

The Royden B. Davis, S.J. Performing Arts Center opened in November, 2005 as the only building in Georgetown history designed specifically for arts education. The Center is the academic home to the Theater and Performance Studies Program as well as to two state of the art theatre spaces – the 239-seat proscenium Gonda Theatre and the black box Devine Studio Theatre. The Davis Center provides classroom and production learning laboratories for hundreds of students at Georgetown every semester, including for first-rate student-produced theater from Black Theatre Ensemble, Mask & Bauble, and Nomadic Theatre, as well as a wide array of music and dance groups in the Department of Performing Arts. In addition, the Davis Center is a hub for interdisciplinary exchange on and off campus, as well as with the wider D.C. community, through our summer festival productions and partnership with Arena Stage, as well as collaborations with Synetic Theater, Theater J, Sojourn Theater, Baghdad University, University of Maryland, Gallaudet University, PostClassical Ensemble, D.C. public schools, and many other artistic, scholarly, activist, social service, and cultural groups.

The Davis Center Season unfolds in intimate dialogue with the Program’s curricular offerings. In addition to mainstage theater productions in the Gonda and Devine Theatres, the Department sponsors numerous music and dance performances, workshops, readings, master classes, symposia, and guest lectures, placing students from the entire Georgetown community in regular contact with leading professionals from the US and beyond. The current roster of teaching faculty features many of the leading scholars, directors, performers, designers, playwrights, dramaturgs, choreographers, critics, technicians, community-based and multimedia artists in the field. In addition, the interdisciplinary reach of the Program is epitomized by the extensive group of Associated Faculty with whom students work, scholars who are housed in other Departments on campus but whose expertise intersects with and contributes to the richness and diversity of the Program's offerings.

A partial and rapidly growing list of luminaries whom we have hosted and collaborated with at the Davis Performing Arts Center includes: Edward Albee, American Opera Theater, American Place Theatre, Daniel Beaty, Robin Becker Dance, Belarus Free Theatre, Theodore Bikel, Irina Brown, Marvin Carlson, Kathleen Chalfant, The Civilians,
Nilo Cruz, DAH Theatre, Joe Dowling, Olympia Dukakis, Christopher Durang, David Edgar, Rick Foucheux, Michael Friedman, Marcus Gardley, Ed Gero, Nadine George-Graves, Katori Hall, Wynn Handman, Danny Hoch, David Henry Hwang, Michael Kahn, Moises Kaufman, Nicolas Kent, Liz Lerman, Emily Mann, David Muse, Pig Iron Theater, Ping Chong & Company, Sister Helen Prejean, Heather Raffo, Clint Ramos, Tim Raphael, Michael Rohd, Ari Roth, Howard Shalwitz, Sojourn Theater, Molly Smith, David Strathairn, Tony  Taccone, Target Margin Theater, Tectonic Theater Project, Irina and Paata Tsikurishvili, John Waters, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Charles Randolph Wright, Karen Zacarías, Mary Zimmerman, Joy Zinoman, and many others.